Bangladesh police have stormed a house outside the capital, Dhaka, shooting dead three people, including the main suspect in the last month’s cafe attack that killed 22 hostages.
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The bodies of the militants were retrieved after police staged an hour-long gun battle. But police believe that Neo-Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, which is close to the ISIS, was involved in organising the attack.
Bangladesh-born Canadian citizen Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury, the alleged mastermind of the attack on the cafe, was among those killed, he said.
“The nation has become free of another curse”, Hasina said, adding that the “elimination of the extremists” would bolster “people’s confidence”.
He will meet Ms Hasina and hold talks with his counterpart Mahmood Ali “on a broad range of issues, including democracy, development, security and human rights”, a senior state department official said.
“The duration of the operation was one hour”. After the operation, police entered the house and found three bodies, the police said.
“They were asked to surrender, but they refused”.
Even though Kerry is coming to Dhaka towards the end of the tenure of the Obama administration, diplomatic sources said the visit is quite “extraordinary” and carries “special significance” as the United States government is giving importance to Hasina’s government after giving it the cold shoulder for years.
The Islamic State terror group initially claimed responsibility for the attack, and released photos from inside the cafe during the siege, including of five of the attackers killed by army commandos at the end of the siege. Attacks over the past two years have killed atheist bloggers, foreign aid workers and religious minorities. “We have yet to identify the two others, but we think [they were] his close aides”, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told reporters while visiting the scene. They say it was the act of the banned group Jumatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh, or JMB, and that ISIL has no presence in the Muslim-majority country.
Police had announced Tk 2 million reward earlier this month for information leading to his arrest.
Police say Chowdhury has led and financed efforts to radicalise young Muslims since returning from Canada three years ago.
Police said they opened fire after the suspects started firing when the raid began.
The police suspects Zia, a former Army major whose full name is Syed Ziaul Haque, heads another local extremist group called Ansar al Islam, blamed for the machete murders of a dozen secular writers and two gay activists.
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However, the government in Bangladesh has rejected the group’s claim of responsibility, saying worldwide Islamic extremist networks do not have a foothold in the Muslim-majority country.
